


The Inquisition Hotel

by maliwanhellfire



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Holiday Exchange, M/M, anachronisms in song choice but idgaf, for yogurt-gun, speakeasy au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-03
Updated: 2016-01-03
Packaged: 2018-05-11 09:49:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5623027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maliwanhellfire/pseuds/maliwanhellfire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dorian sings in the Inquisition Hotel. Bull runs moonshine.<br/>They don't meet in the middle so much as the basement.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Inquisition Hotel

**Author's Note:**

  * For [yogurtgun](https://archiveofourown.org/users/yogurtgun/gifts).



> This was my anadoribull holiday exchange gift to [Yogurt-gun](https://yogurt-gun.tumblr.com). Hope you all enjoy!

The Inquisition was a hotel in the Vashoth quarter. It was made in the Orlesian style, with high-vaulted ceilings and delicate architrave, signage done up in a calligraphic hand. Not very Qunari at all, but that was the point. The owner didn't care much for tradition, beyond getting up early and wearing loose-collared shirts. It was family-owned, and proudly too. A real pillar of the community. 

 

It was also the front for a Speak-easy. It almost had to be. There was no money in hotels, what with the depression. 

  
  


\---

  
  


Dorian would never admit, not even on pain of death, that he loved jazz music. The real stuff, the kind that made you wear your shoes out from dancing. Music made from love and hate, from pure emotion and immaterial frippery. The kind of music the papers railed against. 

 

Sex on soundwaves, so to speak. 

 

Which was why Dorian had to smile like a fake every damn day, when he went to work and sang  _ Sweet Mystery _ , or some ragtime number made to appease the Housewives for a Moral Ferelden. When he worked the Hotel, he sang to middle class tastes, and he hated it. He’d curl his lips and bare his teeth like a capuchin about to bite. No one knew the difference.

 

The little old ladies at table four  _ loved _ him, and for all the effort of telling them they looked lovely in their Sunday best. Men, ironically, liked him far less, but that might have had something to do with how wildly he flirted with their girls.  _ Unartistic _ men didn't seem to know how to tell a woman that she was beautiful. Dorian did, singing  _ at last I've found you,  _ to pretty little dames, while their beaus ignored them. 

 

"You'll get in trouble," Adaar told him, at the end of his first shift. 

 

"Perhaps I will, but so long as I'm here, they'll keep coming back," Dorian replied. 

 

"Silly child, just don't do it to the Vashoth boys, they're much too big for you."

 

"Only if I don't stretch first."

 

She'd laughed like a demon, and slapped him on the back so hard it hurt. 

 

\---

 

Dorian took his breaks in the Riot Room, 9pm on the dot, before second shift kicked in and the bar opened. The Chargers ran the Inquisition's moonshine, and the Bull ran the Chargers. Bull brought up the night's barrels at 9:10, every evening, and if Dorian smiled at the casks first, he could pretend he was there for the drinks and not the view. The Bull was a Tal, a good head taller than Dorian was, with horns wider than most doorways. 

 

During raucous hours, Bull would demure and wear a button-up, but when the Room wasn't open, he lived in undershirts and suit-pants, held up by pink suspenders. He had the body of a prize fighter, just starting to go soft. Heavy with muscle and good living, but not hard. Charming enough that he attracted more than he intimidated, even with his missing eye. 

 

Which worked for more palettes than just Dorian's. Bull had taken home near half the Inquisition's staff, and not always one at a time. He was a cad in an eyepatch. An incorrigible rake. 

 

He was also very, very good in bed, and Dorian most assuredly did not like him so much it made his chest hurt.  

 

"What's the song list tonight?" Blackwall asked, distracting Dorian from his thoughts. 

 

"Let's start with  _ I want to be bad _ , and work our way up," Dorian said. 

 

Blackwall snorted. 

 

"Oh don't huff," Dorian said. "You didn't read my arrangement, did you?"

 

"I did," Blackwall replied. "And you've got another thing coming if you think you're being  _ subtle _ ."

 

"My dear, no one has ever accused me of  _ that _ ," Dorian replied.

 

\---

 

Adaar let him stay after closing. Ostensibly to practice, but more often just so he could take advantage of the Room’s baby grand. Dorian had been raised on piano and violin, with the sort of discipline that would have made an army major weep. It should have been enough to make him hate music, and for a while it had been, but distance had made his heart grow fonder. His father would have been appalled to see him using his trained ear to transcribe the latest jazz number, but then, there were so many things that Dorian did that were worse sins.

 

Sometimes, though, he’d let himself think back to the quiet requiems he’d enjoyed, back when sadness was a more abstract concept, and much easier to savour. It wasn’t the sort of music he’d play to an audience. He couldn’t play it without being honest, earnest. 

 

Boring. Soft. 

 

He touched the keys with reverence, knowing that if anything was being laid to rest, it was his past self, lost to him but not forgotten. He played slow, letting the final bars draw out, pressing the keys on the last notes until the strings went silent. 

 

Behind him, someone clapped slowly, and Dorian startled like a cat. 

 

“Hey, easy,” the Bull said, putting his hands down gently on Dorian’s shoulders. 

 

“Don’t sneak up on people,” Dorian said. 

 

“Didn’t mean to,” Bull replied, and then, “you play well. Never had a chance to hear you before.”

 

Bull’s hands were big and warm. Their heat ate through the chill in Dorian’s shoulders, the one that creeped into the Riot Room when they shut the heating off for the night. Dorian had read a poem once, that spoke of being starved for touch, and he wondered if he was. When Bull touched him he always wanted more than he could get. 

 

“Why don’t you do this for the crowd?” Bull asked, when Dorian let the silence draw out. 

 

“I’ve a mind not to,” Dorian said, pulling the cover down over the keys. “I wouldn’t be what they expected.”

 

Smiling, slick, and chic, handsome and just hollow enough. He could be that while he was singing, because the singing was new. Self-taught. The keys were where he played with old wounds and dug up the bones of the dead. 

 

Dorian turned on the piano bench, looking up to Bull. He paused when he saw what the other man was wearing. 

 

“A suit…” he said. “You’re wearing a full suit.”

 

“That I am,” Bull replied. 

 

“Do you have a date?” Dorian asked, voice thinning. “A funeral?”

 

If Bull was a sight with his arms bare, somehow he was moreso with everything hidden. His jacket had been tailored in the Ferelden style, to emphasise his silhouette, the fabric near-black, and good quality. Bull put his fingertips beneath Dorian’s chin and tilted his head up.  

 

“I was looking for somebody,” Bull said. 

 

“Did you find them?” Dorian asked. 

 

“Yeah,” Bull replied. 

 

“Oh,” Dorian said. 

  
  


\---

 

They put a record on, because Adaar had a player, and they had nowhere else to be. To Dorian’s surprise, Bull knew how to dance slow, and he also liked to lead, which was not a surprise at all. The music was rich and sweet, like molasses, and Dorian felt like he was trapped in it, even as his heart beat double time. 

 

Bull sang in his ear, his voice baritone and so smooth, it made him feel weak. 

 

“ _ My first impression of you, was something indescribably new _ ,” Bull sang, lips brushing Dorian’s crown. 

 

And,  _ ah _ , Dorian thought,  _ this was going to hurt,  _ no matter how it went. He tucked himself in close anyway, and let Bull hold him. Let himself trust and be seduced. 

 

He hid his head when the music stopped, the only sound the gentle rasp of breathing and the crackling of the record player behind. Dorian let his hand slip down to Bull’s lapel, and felt the comforting bulk of him, beneath his own palm. 

 

“Where’d my little canary bird go?” Bull said. 

 

“What is this?” Dorian asked, ignoring the question.

 

“It’s something,” Bull said. “That’s what I’d like it to be.”

 

No one had ever wanted Dorian that way before, no matter how much he’d desired it. He couldn’t help the spike of fear he felt, at being offered what he thought he’d never have. He’d lost too much to care for risking more of the same. 

 

Bull cupped his cheek, just as Dorian opened his mouth to say ‘no’. 

 

“I’ll never hurt you,” Bull said. “Not willingly.”

 

“I see,” Dorian said. 

 

“You know what I mean,” Bull replied. “Not the kind where you don’t ask first.”

 

Dorian slapped him on the chest, and laughed in spite of himself. Bull kissed him, smiling, and it felt like coming home. 

 

“Alright then,” Dorian said. “Alright.”

  
  
  
  
  



End file.
